weeks after, being poisoned, as it was generally believed.  This lady was, immediately after his death, saluted with an absolute order to leave the seraglio, and chuse herself a husband among the great men at the Porte.  I suppose you may imagine her overjoyed at this proposal.—­Quite the contrary.—­These women, who are called, and esteem themselves queens, look upon this liberty as the greatest disgrace and affront that can happen to them.  She threw herself at the sultan’s feet, and begged him to poniard (sic) her, rather than use his brother’s widow with that contempt.  She represented to him, in agonies of sorrow, that she was privileged from this misfortune, by having brought five princes into the Ottoman family; but all the boys being dead, and only one girl surviving, this excuse was not received, and she was compelled to make her choice.  She chose Bekir Effendi, then secretary of state, and above four score years old, to convince the world, that she firmly intended to keep the vow she had made, of never suffering a second husband to approach her bed; and since she must honour some subject so far, as to be called his wife, she would chuse him as a mark of her gratitude, since it was he that had presented her, at the age of ten years, to, her last lord.  But she never permitted him to pay her one visit; though it is now fifteen years she has been in his house, where she passes her time in uninterrupted mourning, with a constancy very little known in Christendom, especially in a widow of one and twenty, for she is now but thirty-six.  She has no black eunuchs for her guard, her husband being obliged to respect her as a queen, and not to inquire at all into what is done in her apartment.

I WAS led into a large room, with a sofa the whole length of it, adorned with white marble pillars like a ruelle, covered with pale blue figured velvet, on a silver ground, with cushions of the same, where I was desired to repose, till the sultana appeared, who had contrived this manner of reception, to avoid rising up at my entrance, though she made me an inclination of her head, when I rose up to her.  I was very glad to observe a lady that had been distinguished by the favour of an emperor, to whom beauties were, every day, presented from all parts of the world.  But she did not seem to me, to have ever been half so beautiful as the fair Fatima I saw at Adrianople; though she had the remains of a fine face, more decayed by sorrow than time.  But her dress was something so surprisingly rich, that I cannot forbear describing it to you.  She wore a vest called dualma, which differs from a caftan by longer sleeves, and folding over at the bottom.  It was of purple cloth, strait to her shape, and thick set, on each side, down to her feet, and round the sleeves, with pearls of the best water, of the same size as their buttons commonly are.  You must not suppose, that I mean as large as those of my Lord ——­, but about the bigness of a pea; and to these buttons